Challenging Scientism

By Liam Scheff
Salvo Magazine – Summer 2006

Here are three ideas that you will never see debated by the major media:

• Was a bird-flu pandemic ever really likely?
• Is AIDS in fact a sexually transmitted disease?
• Does current evolutionary theory truly explain the diversity of life on earth?

Each of these widely-promoted beliefs is contradicted by more competing evidence than you can shake a stick at (from wide and varied sources), but you’ll never hear about it from the major outlets for science news – the New York Times, PBS, NPR, the BBC, or CNN – because the media simply doesn’t question the received scientific wisdom.

Because the major media doesn’t do science journalism the way it reports news.

When watch the news, we expect to hear crossfire and flak. We’re not flustered by divergent takes on policy. We feel that government business should be aired and battled over in the public sphere. We expect policy-makers and government officials to regularly submit to hard questions from the press, and to take the hot seat on the news shows.
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– flu survivors in Vietnam

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Academic medicine has been and is the most important pillar of support of all dictatorships and governments which do not want to submit to written law, to constitutions, to human rights, that is, to the democratically legitimized social contract.

– Virologist Dr. Stephan Lanka – Interview 10.27.2005

– flu survivors in Vietnam

Is there a bird flu pandemic? German virologist Dr. Stephan Lanka says no, and does so in detail. here

He makes some points that I’m sure will seem startling, but there’s a wonderfully no-nonsense, common-sense approach to his thinking (“Think for yourself, look into it yourself”), and a refreshing lack of fear-mongering.

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We’ve been told to prepare for a bird flu pandemic, but none has emerged. What’s happened since the initial reporting?

What was happening in Southeast Asia, where the majority of problems seemed to occur?

The major media has compared the the possibility of a flu-epidemic with what happened in 1918, at the end of World War 1. Is this a reasonable comparison?

We’ve been told that vaccinations and Tamiflu will help us, but is that true?

In sum, I haven’t heard these questions asked or answered by the major media or public health offices:
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Roche Lab’s Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) is an anti-enzyme drug that’s being sold and sought widely in light of the much-fanned hue and cry over the potential flu.

Damn those birds (and call my broker)!

Tamiflu isn’t a new drug. It shows up in Roche’s roster back in 1999 – after they bought if from Gilead Pharmaceuticals, which designed it in 1996.

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I’ve been trying to tell a few fellow critical thinkers that the bird flu ain’t what it appears to be.

I will be providing more on that question in the days to come.

For now, it’s worth noting that the public’s tendency towards “Let’s Get Scared!” has given opportunity for a hell of a pharmaceutical bill.

Try this on for size – a bill poised to take away:

• the FDA,

• the Freedom of Information Act,

• And your (or your family’s) ability to sue if you are injured or killed from use of a vaccine, drug or other pharma product.

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